We recently launched a variety of new cards for spring holidays like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, along with other occasion cards celebrating weddings, engagements, and new homes. Several of our new gift wrap styles feature hand painted watercolor patterns – a brand new style for 2017! Take a look at all the new styles in our new arrivals section!

We recently added lots of new product to our shop as part of our National Stationery Show release, and we’re getting ready to add more new cards to our lineup next month! To make room for everything new, we’re having a sale — we’re selling mystery packs that contain 10 cards + 10 envelopes for just $10. The packs include a wide range of designs, and are available in 3 styles: occasion, thanks & notes, and holiday, and each pack features a mixture of letterpress and offset printed cards. The photos below show a sampling of some of the cards included in the packs, but each mystery pack will vary. Quantities are limited, and the sale ends on Sunday, so shop now!

We’re excited to introduce a brand new paper to the Smock line. Our new gray paper is 100% recycled (50% post consumer) and looks beautiful with gold foil stamping. This new paper debuts with our latest release, and is featured on three cards: Happy New Home, Cheers, and Congratulations. Paired with classic white envelopes, these congratulatory cards are festive, fun, and chic.

It’s hard to believe that the 2013 National Stationery Show has already come and gone! We had a great time at the show catching up with our Smock dealers and introducing new products, and we were beyond excited to be honored by the Greeting Card Association with our second Louie award for our “Like Campfires” letterpress love card! Smock also sponsored Oh So Beautiful Paper’s 2013 Paper Party, so it was a busy week for the team in New York! Here’s a peek at our booth display and some of the new products we introduced at the show. We’ll be posting a follow-up later this month complete with a DIY tutorial on how to make our festive cone garland! Here’s a sneak peek at some of our new holiday gift wrap, and a close-up of our decorative gift wrap display featuring hundreds of colorful cones. We also added new boxes and letterpress coasters to our line-up, too — keep an eye out for these great new products in a Smock store near you! Our new kraft collection was a huge hit as well! Photography courtesy of Nole Garey at Oh So Beautiful Paper

The newest letterpress card in our Change the World card series has arrived! Fin is a new letterpress card whose proceeds will help the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch®, a program that engages and empowers consumers and businesses to purchase seafood that is fished or farmed in ways that minimize their impact on the environment.

Why should you care about where your seafood comes from?

90% of table fish (including cod, shark, swordfish, salmon, and more) have been fished out of the oceans. Many fish and other animals caught in fishing gear are thrown away as unwanted bycatch – amounting to many millions of metric tons of marine life wasted each year. Scientists predict that if we continue on this path, we’ll see the end of most seafood by 2048.

Fish are important. They contribute to healthy oceans and act as an essential source of protein for many cultures. The global consumption of fish has hit a record high, reaching an average of 17kg per person. Fisheries and aquaculture supplied the world with about 145m tonnes of seafood in 2009, providing about 16% of the population’s animal protein intake. As such, the loss of seafood as a viable food option could lead to mass starvation.

Healthy, wild ocean ecosystems provide a variety of other services to the planet, including the air we breathe. Scientists believe that phytoplankton, tiny ocean plants, contribute between 50 to 85 percent of the oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere.

What can you do about it?

The most important thing you can do is to vote with your fork. Carry your Seafood Watch® pocket guide (or get the app on your smartphone!) and use it to purchase sustainable seafood wherever you go. Use the guide to find your “Best Choices” or when those aren’t available, “Good Alternatives”. (Our Fin cards come with a Seafood Watch® pocket guide!)

Help raise awareness by sharing information with friends and family. You can also ask questions about where they purchase seafood. Businesses respond to the needs of their paying customers – so the importance of this action cannot be overestimated.

If you haven’t purchased a box of letterpress Change the World cards yet (or if you’re looking to buy more!), you’re in luck. From now through August 27, get an extra 25% off all sale items when you buy a box of our Change the World cards. Use discount code zaeg6Dub at checkout to take advantage of this offer.

The profits from the series’ second card, Fracking, helps Earthworks’ Oil & Gas Accountability Project change the gas and oil industry in order to protect the environment and our drinking water. The Fracking cards come with temporary tattoos — you can view photos of people wearing their tattoos (and upload a photo of your own!) on the special Tumblr page we’ve set up at gas-and-water-dont-mix.Tumblr.com.

The fine print: sale ends at 11:59pm on Monday, August 27. Order must contain a minimum of 1 box of Fracking or Sunflower cards to receive the discount.

Having launched at last year’s National Stationery Show, making the trip to New York City for the stationery show this year was especially fun for the Smock team! It was such an incredible opportunity to meet with the awesome stores we work with daily, to introduce ourselves to new stores and to reconnect with friends old and new in the world of paper and letterpress. Plus we were super excited to introduce all of our new designs including new Everyday letterpress cards and gift wrap, three new letterpress wedding invitation designs, and a brand new letterpress and offset Social Occasions album, full of beautifully customizable calling cards, letterhead, hang tags, correspondence cards and social occasion invitations.

Smock’s Creative Director, Amy Graham Stigler, did an amazing job ensuring Smock’s booth was absolutely beautiful – it was such a nice place to be during the show as we introduced our many visitors to Smock! It was a lot of hard work pulling the booth together at the Javitz Center, but luckily we had co-owner Harold on the team to make sure everything went smoothly. And, of course, we couldn’t leave Syracuse without making sure to bring along our #1 Smock team member, Jasper, who is always generous with his smiles and two year old charm.

Thank you so much to everyone who came to visit Smock at the National Stationery Show! For everyone who wasn’t able to be in New York, we have more photos and so many exciting new letterpress designs to share soon!

If you’re still looking for unique holiday gifts that help save the world, go right this minute to Nest (www.buildanest.com). Nest is a nonprofit who gives micro-credit loans to women artists in developing countries, and they’re funded by products sold on their web site. We were excited to learn about Nest for a lot of reasons (inspiration! cool gifts! women helping women!), but also because developing countries are often where drastic environmental mis-uses are occurring, simply because there are not enough economic opportunities other than clear-cutting, etc. On Nest, we’re selling a selection of Smock letterpress note cards, letterpress thank you cards, letterpress gift tags, and 100% post-consumer recycled gift wrap. A percentage of every sale goes to fund the hard and good work that Nest is doing. Nest was recently picked by Oprah as a “Gift that Gives.” Thanks to our new Smock wedding dealer, Debra at Luxe Expressions, for turning us onto this cool organization!

What a thrill to find Smock’s Garden letterpress thank you cards in this month’s issue of Body + Soul! I don’t read a whole of magazines, but Body + Soul is one of the few that I subscribe too (in part because I really want a Life Coach!) — I love their laid back, eco approach and recipes involving kale. Body + Soul writes, “The newly launched Smock makes its quirk graphic letterpress stationery from sustainable bamboo paper printed with vegetable, low-VOC inks.” We also were excited to have our Delft letterpress notecards in the December 2008 / January 2009 issue of More magazine (they call us “pretty and principled,”) and to see Smock as the tip of the day at Green Daily (they featured our holiday cards — hooray!).